HI Obamas

Huffington Post has a couple of pages featuring The Obamas' Hawaiian vacation photos. They include beaches, picnic, golf, and Obama body-surfing. One quick comment I'd like to make is that I've watched candidates age rapidly, get gray hair, bags under the eyes, lose their voices, and nearly wear out during a Presidential campaign, but Sen. Obama doesn't even look tired. He looks great. Look at the 2 sets of pics here and here.

Well, it may be fluff and irrelevant*, but the pictures really reminded me of the 1960s Kennedys. The reason is because, like the 1960s Kennedys, they are just such a beautiful family, the kind you might want to project yourself into, especially if you wanted to somehow switch your own family with a nicer one. I don't know how many surrogate families I "adopted" during my life just to bring myself a sense of normalcy and stability (and I would now add that normalcy is way overrated - I see that through adult eyes when I couldn't before). When I was about 9 I saved clipping scrapbooks of my personal heroes, which at the time were the Kennedy family and the Mercury astronauts. (This was before The Beatles came along gave me something new to collect.) I think that if I was 9 right now, I'd have an Obama family scrapbook, only it would be digital.

I lived in Hawaii a little while when I was little. I dug out some slides that were really a hoot - Hawaii in the 50s, and now I realize that this printer/scanner I got free with the new computer does not scan slides. grrr. I wanted to include those in this post, but will have to promise them for later.

*McCain's camp would say that a President's image with the public is not important, such as these images of vitality, but then tell you that the recession is all in your head. So is image and perception and confidence important... or not?